Honour This Day (33 page)

Bolitho could feel his limbs quivering, as if they would never stop. He heard Parris shout, “In Christ's name! She's going to fire!”

San Mateo
had run out every gun, and at the range of some fifty yards could not miss with any of them, even though two of her own consorts lay directly in the path of her broadside.

Bolitho's mind refused to clear. It was
Hyperion
they wanted. The defiant ship with his flag still at the fore which had somehow broken their line, and inspired the others to follow. He looked at Allday but he was staring at the enemy flagship, his cutlass hanging loosely from his fist.

Together. Even now.

Then the flagship fired. The sound was deafening, and as the weight of the broadside smashed into the drifting
Hyperion,
Bolitho felt the deck rear up as if the ship was sharing their agony.

He was thrown to the side of the quarterdeck, his ears deaf to the thundering roar of falling spars, of men crying and screaming before the torn rigging dragged them over the side like corpses in a huge net.

Bolitho crawled to Midshipman Mirrielees and dragged at his shoulder to turn him on to his back. His eyes were shut tight, and there was moisture like tears beneath the lids. He was dead. He saw Allday crouching on his knees, his mouth wide as he sucked in the air. Their eyes met and Allday tried to grin.

Bolitho felt someone pulling him to his feet, his eyes blinded again by the sunlight as it laid bare the destruction.

Then the smoke drifted lower and hid
San Mateo
from view.

19 THE
L
AST FAREWELL

S
IR
P
IERS
Blachford steadied himself against the makeshift table while the guns thundered out yet again and shook the whole ship. He wiped his streaming face and said, “Take this man away. He's dead.”

The surgeon's assistants seized the naked corpse and dragged it away into the shadows of the orlop deck.

Blachford reached up and felt the massive beam by his head. If there was really a hell, he thought, it must surely look like this.

The swinging lanterns which dangled above the table made it worse, if that were possible, casting shadows up the curved sides of the hull one moment, and laying bare the huddled or inert shapes of the wounded who were being brought down to the orlop with hardly a let-up.

He looked at his companion, George Minchin,
Hyperion
's own surgeon, a coarse-faced man with sprouting grey hair. His eyes were red-rimmed, and not only from fatigue. There was a huge jug of rum beside the table, to help ease the agony or the passing moments of the pitiful wounded who were brought to the table, stripped, then held like victims under torture until the work was done. Minchin seemed to drink more than his share.

Blachford had seen the most terrible wounds. Men without limbs, with their faces and bodies burned, or clawed by flaying splinters. The whole place, which was normally the midshipmen's berth, where they slept, ate and studied their manuals by the dim light of their glims, was filled with suffering. It stank of blood, vomit and pain. Each thundering roar of a broadside, or the sickening crash of enemy balls hitting the ship around them, brought cries and groans from the figures who waited to be attended.

Blachford could only guess what was happening up there, where it was broad daylight. Here on the orlop, no outside light ever penetrated. Below the waterline it was the safest place for this grisly work, but it revolted him none the less.

He gestured to the obscene tubs below the table, partly filled with amputated limbs, a stark warning to those who would be the next to be carried to endure what must be an extension of their agony. Only death seemed like a blessed relief here. “Take them out!”

He listened to the beat of hammers in the narrow carpenter's walks, which ran around the ship below the waterline. Like tiny corridors between the inner compartments and the outer hull, where the carpenter and his mates repaired shot holes or leaks as the iron smashed again and again into the side.

There was a long drawn out rumbling directly overhead, and Blachford stared at the red-painted timbers as if he expected them to cave in.

A frightened voice called from the shadows. “What's that, Toby?”

Someone replied, “They're runnin' in the lower battery, that's what!”

Blachford asked quickly, “Why would they do that?”

Minchin took a cupful of rum and wiped his mouth with a blood-stained fist.

“Clearing it. We're alongside one o' the buggers. They'll need every spare Jack to fight 'em off!”

He shouted hoarsely, “Next one, Donovan!”

Then he eyed Blachford with something like contempt. “Not quite what you're used to, I expect? No fancy operating rooms, with lines of ignorant students hanging on your every word.” He blinked his red-rimmed eyes as smoke eddied through the deck. “I hope you learn something useful today,
Sir Piers.
Now you know what we have to suffer in the name of medicine.”

A loblolly boy said, “This one's an officer, sir.”

Blachford leaned over the table as the lieutenant was stripped of his torn shirt and pressed flat on the table.

It was the second lieutenant, Lovering, who had been shot down by a Spanish marksman.

Blachford studied the terrible wound in his arm. The blood looked black in the swinging lanterns, the skin ragged where the ball had split apart upon hitting the bone.

Lovering stared at him, his eyes glazed with pain. “Oh God, is it bad?”

Minchin touched his bare shoulder. It felt cold and clammy. “Sorry, Ralph.” He glanced at Blachford. “It's got to come off.”

Lovering closed his eyes. “Please God, not my arm!”

Blachford waited for an assistant to bring his instruments. He had had to order them to be cleaned again and again. No wonder men died of gangrene. He said gently, “He's right. For your own sake.”

The lieutenant rolled his head away from the nearest lantern. He was about twenty-two, Blachford thought.

Lovering said in a whisper, “Why not kill me? I'm done for.”

More crashes shook the hull and several instruments fell to the deck. Blachford stooped to retrieve one of them and stared, sickened, as a rat scurried away into the shadows.

Minchin saw his disgust and set his teeth. Coming here with all his high-and-mighty talk. What did he know about war?

From one corner of his eye he saw the lamplight glint on Blachford's knife.

“Here, Ralph.” He placed a wedge of leather between his jaws before he could protest. “I'll give you some proper brandy after this.”

A voice yelled through the misty smoke. “Another officer, sir!”

An assistant held up his lantern and Blachford saw Lieutenant Quayle slipping down against one of the massive timbers, trying to cover his face with his coat.

A seaman protested angrily, “'E's not even marked!”

Lieutenant Lovering struggled on the table, and but for the assistant holding his uninjured arm, and Minchin's hands on his shoulders, would have fought his way to his feet.

“You bloody bastard! You cowardly—” His voice trailed away as he fell back in a faint on the table.

Blachford glanced again at Quayle; he was gripping his fingers and whimpering like a child.

“Call him what you will, but he's as much a casualty as any of them!”

Minchin replaced the leather wedge between Lovering's jaws. Brutal, callous; they were the marks of his trade. He held Lovering's shoulders and waited for him to feel the first incision of the knife. With luck he might lose consciousness completely before the saw made its first stroke.

Minchin could dismiss what Blachford and others like him thought about the navy's surgeons. He could even ignore Lovering's agony, although he had always liked the young lieutenant.

Instead he concentrated on his daughter in Dover, whom he had not seen for two years.

“Next.” Lovering was carried away; the amputated limb fell into the tub. The
wings and limbs
tub as most of them called it. Until it was their turn.

Blachford waited for a seaman whose foot had been crushed beneath a careering gun-truck to be laid before him. Around him the loblolly boys and their helpers held the flickering lanterns closer. Blachford looked at his own arms, red to the elbows, like Minchin's and the rest.
No wonder they call us butchers.

The man began to scream and plead but sucked greedily on a mug of rum which Minchin finished before laying bare the shattered foot. The hull quivered again, but it felt as if the battle had drawn away. There seemed to be cannon fire from all directions, occasional yells which were like lost spirits as they filtered through the other decks.

Hyperion
might have been boarded, Blachford thought, or the enemy could have drawn away to re-form. He knew little about sea-warfare other than what he had been told or had read about in the
Gazette.
Only since his travels around the fleet had he thought about the men who made victories and defeats real, into flesh and blood like his own.

“Next!”
It never stopped.

This time a marine ran down a ladder and called, “We've taken the Don alongside, lads!” He vanished again, and Blachford was amazed that some of the wounded could actually raise a weak cheer. No wonder Bolitho loved these sailors.

He looked down at the young midshipman. A child.

Minchin probed open part of his side where the ribs showed white through the blood.

Blachford said quietly, “God, he looks so young.”

Minchin stared at him, wanting to hurt him, to make him suffer.

“Well, Mr Springett won't be getting any older, Sir Piers. He's got a fistful of Spanish iron inside him!” He gestured angrily. “Take him away.”

“How old was he?”

Minchin knew the boy was thirteen, but something else caught his attention. It was the sudden stillness, which even the far-off gunfire could not break. The deck was swaying more slowly, as if the ship was heavier in the water. But the pumps were still going. God, he thought, in this old ship they never seemed to stop.

Blachford saw his intent expression. “What is it?”

Minchin shook his head. “Don't know.” He glanced at the dark shapes of the wounded along the side of the orlop. Some already dead, with no one to notice or care. Others waiting, still waiting. But this time . . . He said harshly, “They're all sailors. They
know
something is wrong.”

Blachford stared at the smoke-filled ladder which mounted to the lower gun deck. It was as if they were the only ones left aboard. He took out his watch and peered at it. Minchin reached down and refilled his cup with rum, right to the brim.

He had seen the fine gold timepiece with the crest engraved on its guard. God rot him!

The roar of the broadside when it came was like nothing Minchin had ever experienced. There must have been many guns, and yet they were linked into one gigantic clap of thunder which exploded against the ship as if the sound, and not the massive weight of metal, was striking into the timbers.

The deck canted right over, shivered violently as it reared against the ship alongside, but the din did not stop. There was an outstanding, splitting crack which seemed to come right through the deck; it was followed immediately by a roar of crashing spars and rigging, and heavy thuds which he guessed were guns being hurled back from their ports.

The wounded were shouting and pleading, some dragging themselves to the ladder, their blood marking the futility of their efforts. Blachford heard the broken spars thudding against the hull, then sudden screams from the carpenter's walk, men clawing their way in darkness as the lanterns were blown apart.

Minchin picked himself up from the deck, his ears still ringing from the explosion. He saw some rats scurrying past the bodies of those who were beyond pain, and shook his head to clear it.

As he brushed past, Blachford called, “Where are you going?”

“My sickbay. All I own in this bloody world is in there.”

“In Heaven's name,
tell me,
man!”

Minchin steadied himself as the deck gave another great shudder. The pumps had finally stopped. He said savagely, “We're going down. But I'm not staying to watch it!”

Blachford stared round.
If I survive this . . .
Then he took a grip on his racing thoughts.

“Get these men ready to move on deck.” The assistants nodded, but their eyes were on the ladder.
Going down.
Their life. Their home, whether from choice or impressment; it could not happen. Shoes clattered on the ladder, and Dacie, the one-eyed boatswain's mate, peered down at them.

“Will you come up, Sir Piers? It's a bloody shambles on deck.”

“What about these wounded?”

Dacie gripped the handrail and wiped his remaining eye. He wanted to run, run, keep on running. But all his life he had been trained to stand fast, to obey.

“I'll pass the word, Sir Piers.” Then he was gone.

Blachford picked up his bag and hurried to the ladder. As he climbed the first steps he felt they were different. At an angle. He sensed the chill of fear for the first time.

He thought of Minchin's anger.

Going down.

Lieutenant Stephen Jenour retained his grip on Bolitho's arm even after he had pulled him from the deck. He was almost incoherent in his relief and horror. “Thank God, oh thank God!”